Taj Mahal: Monument of love, It's a celebration of woman built in marble. India travel, tourism

Taj Mahal

Come, walk along the pathway beside the reflecting pool with fountains upto the mausoleum crafted in soft & pure marble and jewelled with semi precious stones, where in the serenity of paradise rests the Queen in peace with her King. Come to unfold the pages from the past to churn the charm out of its mystique and enrich your imagination about this marvel of an epic in stone, The Taj!

The grace of perfection of proportions and grandeur of geometrical patterns of well appointed gardens enhancing the poise of the whole complex together add magnificence to the delicacy of this mance of love, dedication and purity, ‘The Taj’!

Come take a dip into the saga of ‘The Taj’, culled out from no fiction but facts and unfurl a saga, which is set out of nothing but pure love!

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder! Probably for Taj Mahal, the axiom is just the other way round.The Taj is the beauty personified! The Taj displays its different moods through its varied shades. The Taj has as many shades as any kind of beauty can ever have! The Taj is pinkish in the morning, milky white in the evening, golden when the moon shines and the intermediary variants during different hours of the day and during different seasons in a year.

Picturesque descriptions by the historians contemporary to the period of its making, the facts revealed by the scholars & archaeologists of today and the panoramic montage of the reasons behind its making are sketched with every step you would walk towards the mausoleum the next time you visit The Taj!
Shahab Uddin Muhammad Shah Jahan I (full title: Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram, Abu'l-Muzaffar Shahab ud-din Muhammad, Sahib-i-Qiran-i-Sani, Shah Jahan I Padshah Ghazi Zillu'llah [Firdaus-Ashiyani]) ruled India from 1628 until 1658.

From ‘Khurram’ to Shah Jahan: The blue-eyed of the Mughal Royals, the young ‘Khurram’ impressed his father the Emperor Jahangir with his intense military successes of 1617 against the Lodi in the Deccan, which effectively secured the southern border of the empire.The grateful father rewarded him with the prestigious title 'Shah Jahan Bahadur ', which implicitly sealed his inheritance. The name Shah Jahan comes from Persian meaning "King of the World."

His early years saw him receive a cultured, broad education and distinguish himself in the martial arts and as a commander of his father's armies in numerous campaigns, where he became responsible for most of the territorial gains of his father's reign. Khurrum also demonstrated a precocious talent for building, impressing his father at the age of 16 when he built his own quarters within Babur's Kabul fort and redesigned several buildings within Agra fort.

He was the fifth Mughal ruler after Babur, Humayun, Akbar, and Jahangir. While young, he was a favourite of Akbar. Like Akbar, he was eager to expand his empire. Even while very young, he could be pointed out to be the successor to the Mughal throne after the death of Jahangir. He succeeded to the throne upon his father's death in 1627. He is considered to be one of the greatest Mughals and his reign has been called the Golden Age of Mughals.

Shah Jahan erected many splendid monuments, the most famous of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra. The Pearl Mosque at Agra, the palace and great mosque at Delhi. The celebrated Peacock Throne, said to be worth millions of dollars by modern estimates. He was the founder of Shahjahanabad, now known as 'Old Delhi'. Other creations of Shah Jahan also include the Diwan-i-Am and Diwan-i-Khas within the Red Fort in Delhi.

Who could ever think that an eternal love leading to the saga of infinite bondage can evolve out of a desert like land and would blossom to be the reason to gift our world a poem-in-marble, The Taj!

No image of The Taj, neither on canvass nor on celluloid, can adequately express its conceptual imaginary nor convey the legend, the poetry and the romance that shrouds what Rabindranath Tagore calls "a teardrop on the cheek of time".

The Taj Mahal, a spectacle in white marble, unparalleled in grandeur that depicts the sheer opulence of an era. The awesome structure, the monument of love that Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan gave to the world, stands as a testimony of his intense love for his wife Mumtaz Mahal.

It is a romance celebrated in marble and glorified with precious and semi-precious stones and that’s the way to appreciate it!

Uttar Pradesh, the Land of The Taj is rich in its cultural heritage and has always been a prominent arena of politics since the ancient times. Agra, the City of The Taj and once the capital of the Mughal Empire during the 16th through the early 18th centuries, enjoys a close proximity to the National Capital City of New Delhi.

Tourists from all over the world visit Agra to make a pilgrimage to Taj Mahal, India’s most famous architectural wonder, in a land where magnificent temples and edifices abound to remind visitors about the rich civilization of a country that is slowly but surely lifting itself into an industrialized society as well.

Taj Mahal means "Crown Palace" and is in fact the most well preserved and architecturally beautiful tomb in the world. The English poet, Sir Edwin Arnold has described The Taj as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passions of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones."

It is a romance celebrated in marble and glorified with precious and semi-precious stones and that’s the way to appreciate it!.

Taj Mahal stands on the bank of River Yamuna, which otherwise serves as a wide moat defending the Great Red Fort of Agra, the center of the Mughal emperors until they moved their capital to Delhi in 1637. It was built by the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan in 1631 in memory of his third but the most favourite wife, in fact a soul-mate Mumtaz Mahal, a Muslim Persian princess. She died while accompanying her husband in Burhanpur in a campaign to crush a rebellion after giving birth to their 13th child. The death so crushed the emperor that all his hair and beard were said to have grown snow white in a few months.

When Mumtaz Mahal was still alive, she extracted four promises from the emperor: first, that he build the Taj; second, that he should marry again; third, that he be kind to their children; and fourth, that he visit the tomb on her death anniversary. However, due to ill health and being under house arrest by his own son and successor to the throne, Aurangzeb, barred him from continue to keep the last promise.

The Taj rises on a high red sandstone base topped by a huge white marble terrace on which rests the famous dome flanked by four tapering minarets. Within the dome lies the jewel-inlaid cenotaph of the queen. So exquisite is the workmanship that the Taj has been described as "having been designed by giants and finished by jewellers". The only asymmetrical object in the Taj is the casket of the emperor which was built beside the queen’s as an afterthought.

Legend has it that during his eight years long ailment and imprisonment, Shah Jahan used to intensly view The Taj lying on the bed through a diamond fixed in the wall in front at a particular angle. WOW!!!

As a tribute to a woman of exotic beauty and as a monument of a love story, which is keeping us engrossed even when we are reading through these pages here, truely an ever-lasting romance of a love not ended as yet, the Taj reveals its subtleties to its beholder!

The rectangular base of Taj is in itself symbolic of the different sides from which to view a beautiful woman. The main gate is like a veil to a woman’s face which should be lifted delicately, gently and without haste on the wedding night. In Indian tradition the veil is lifted gently to reveal the beauty of the bride. As one stands inside the main gate of Taj, his eyes are directed to an arch which frames the Taj.

The dome is made of white marble, but the tomb is set against the plain across the river and it is this background that works its magic of colours that, through their reflection, change the view of the Taj. The colours change at different hours of the day and during different seasons.

The Taj sparkles like a jewel in moonlight when the semi-precious stones inlaid into the white marble on the main mausoleum catch and reflect back its glow with a better gleam. The Taj is pinkish in the morning, milky white in the evening and golden when the moon shines. These changes, they say, depict the different moods of a beauty of any kind.

Different people have different views of the Taj but it would be enough to say that the Taj has a life of its own that leaps out of marble. A masterpiece of the art and science of architecture, a representative of an era called The Mughal Period surpassing any authority to add or de-add anything in any sense in or out of the Taj!

The Taj Mahal stands tall with grace is not just a parable epitome of emotional & eternal love between a man and a woman but for other reasons too _

Emperor Shah Jahan, who commissioned the construction of ‘The Taj’, desired to create it also as a symbol of solemnity, harmony, purity and spirituality as well.

The Taj Mahal (/ˌtɑːdʒ məˈhɑːl/, more often /ˈtɑːʒ/;, from Persian and Arabic, "crown of palaces", pronounced [ˈt̪aːdʒ mɛˈɦɛl]; also "the Taj") is a white marble mausoleum located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is widely recognized as "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage".

Taj Mahal is regarded by many as the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements from Islamic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Indian architectural styles.

In 1983, the Taj Mahal became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar component of the Taj Mahal, it is actually an integrated complex of structures. The construction began around 1632 and was completed around 1653, employing thousands of artisans and craftsmen. The construction of the Taj Mahal was entrusted to a board of architects under imperial supervision, including Abd ul-Karim Ma'mur Khan, Makramat Khan, and Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. Lahauri is generally considered to be the principal designe

The Taj is not merely a monument of grace and dignity alone. It is, in fact, a message to all mankind that “Pure love is the soul of life”.

The Taj is a reminder for all mankind about the universally accepted but not so well practiced concept of ‘Love & Peace’, the essence of the paradise, free from conflicts of races and geographical boundaries is important to be observed solemnly.

The Taj is simply a majestic tribute to an exotic beauty!

The saga of The Taj would be half told if the myths related to it are not mentioned. Like many a great buildings the Taj Mahal has its myths and legends. It seems that there is more fiction on the Taj than serious scholarly research. Several of the stories belong solely to oral tradition and are
told by the guides, some are so established that they form a popular history of the monument and have made their way into guidebooks, and some have been taken up by scholars, or even created by them, and thus become part of the scholarly debate.

Facts

To the last category belong the oldest tales of the Taj. Here the most widely known is the story of the second Taj, the 'Black Taj', which Shah Jahan intended to build in black marble opposite the present mausoleum, on the site of the Mahtab Bagh. It goes back to Jean-Baptiste Tavernier who, when at Agra in 1665 AD, reported that 'Shahjahan began to built his own tomb on the other side of the river, but the war with his sons interrupted his plan, and Aurangzeb, who reigns at present, is not disposed to complete it. Shah Jahan was put under house arrest by his own son and successor by force, Aurangzeb. The latter did not agree with his father on most issues and was particularly opposed to him building a black Taj as his own mausoleum.

Upon Shah Jahan's death, Aurangzeb made the body of the Emperor, who got the body of his beloved Mumtaz in a golden casket from Burhanpur to Agra, carried in a boat by only two men and buried him in the Taj, next to his wife in probably the simplest manner.

Shah Jahan, the Emperor, who fulfilled the wishes of his beloved, could not find fulfilment of his own wish to build a Black Taj to express his mourning for the beloved Queen Mumtaz Mahal even after his death. That was the serenity in the purity of love.

Legend has it that during his eight years long ailment and imprisonment, Shah Jahan used to intensly view The Taj lying on the bed through a diamond fixed in the wall in front at a particular angle, WOW!!!

As a tribute to a woman of exotic beauty and as a monument of a love story, which is keeping us engrossed even when we are reading through these pages here, truely an ever-lasting romance of a love not ended as yet, the Taj reveals its subtleties to its Beholder! Come!! Be Thy One!!!